


Lemonade Summer

by manic_intent



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Blow Jobs, Dumb Kid!Peter, Fingerfucking, M/M, No Plot, Police Officer!Saal, That all-human AU with no sci fi or aliens, The E-rated part of this fic is not underaged, where Peter is a kid who falls in love with a police officer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 11:40:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4303554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saal was a dirty old man.</p><p>There. He admitted it. That was something, right? The first step to working on a problem was recognising it, and all.</p><p>The conviction had crept up as an uncomfortable little worm of an idea in his mind during the summer. Saal had been watering the baking plants in his back yard, more to show a vague sense of willing rather than any real commitment to their welfare, and had glanced up when the kid he had always mentally termed as The Neighbour's Boy had pelted past, on the opposite side of the fence, shirtless and in a pair of shorts so small as to possibly be illegal, whooping and chasing some other kids with a water gun, as golden as the summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lemonade Summer

**Author's Note:**

> This was a terrible idea that I developed when I was starting to lose interest in Probable Cause. Like most random fic ideas that pop up in the middle of huge fics, it's silly, porny and weird. Sorry. Since this is is an all-humans!AU, I'm changing Garthan's name slightly to a more human 'Garth', but keeping Saal rather than going with Saul.
> 
> Then I sort of wandered out of the GoTG fandom, and months later found most of this sitting on my Dropbox and got around to finishing it. So uh. Enjoy? 
> 
> Notes for new readers:
> 
> Garthan Saal is the character by Peter Serafinowicz:  
> 
> 
> Notes for everyone else: 
> 
> One reader told me that Peter Serafinowicz and Chris Pratt were both in Parks & Recreation. :o Here's one of the scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gPPrygjXQM omg Peter's accent, I die.

I.

Saal was a dirty old man.

There. He admitted it. That was something, right? The first step to working on a problem was recognising it, and all.

The conviction had crept up as an uncomfortable little worm of an idea in his mind during the summer. Saal had been watering the baking plants in his back yard, more to show a vague sense of willing rather than any real commitment to their welfare, and had glanced up when the kid he had always mentally termed as The Neighbour's Boy had pelted past, on the opposite side of the fence, shirtless and in a pair of shorts so small as to possibly be illegal, whooping and chasing some other kids with a water gun, as golden as the summer. 

The kid was sixteen. _Sixteen_. And he must have hit a growth spurt at some point when Saal had been mired in the November Man case and had pulled months of late nighters in the precinct, because he had abruptly metamorphosed from being some skinny random kid into some sort of underaged, teenager Adonis. 

_Underaged_. 

Saal had always been vaguely convinced that God hated police officers. Until that hot summer day, he'd never realized that God also hated him in particular. 

He had stared after the kid for so long that he drowned one of the Fern Things, one of the few plants aggressive and bloody-minded enough to survive in the neglected wasteland of Saal's garden, then Saal had shut off the water, wordlessly gone into the house, and taken a very cold shower. A cruel God would have left it at that, but since God was cruel as well as sadistic, He had let Saal spend the next few days alternating between a sort of horrified lust and intermittent bouts of self-disgust, and then had sent the kid over the fence one very late evening when Saal was nursing a cold beer on the back porch and trying not to look too hard at his personal problems. 

There had been a ball first, a ratty looking baseball, that had shot over the fence and rolled into the thicket of Fern Things, then as Saal had straightened up from the porch stair, the kid had climbed over, confident at first, before freezing when he realized that Saal was staring right at him.

"Oh. Um. Officer." The kid cleared his throat, one hand still pressed against the fence. "I, uh, would'a rung your doorbell, but I wasn't sure if you were sleeping and it was kinda late to be disturbing people. Uh. Nice night, right?" When Saal didn't say anything, the kid scuffled a step closer to the Fern Things, adding, "Sorry. Um. I'll just, get the ball then. Sorry."

Good God. The kid's voice had broken too. It was mellower now, a little husky, and Saal turned away hurriedly, walking to the thicket until he found the ball, then tossing it over. The kid caught it one-handed, quick and dexterous, then blushed a little, none of which was really any good for Saal's nervous system. "I'll, uh, be heading back now. Thanks. For the ball." When Saal nodded slowly, the kid added, all in a rush, "Peter. I'm called Peter. But you knew that, right? Since we're neighbours. And all." 

Saal had actually forgotten, not having very much of an attention span for matters that weren't police related, but he nodded anyway. Peter fidgeted awkwardly, and turned to climb up over the fence again. Bemused, Saal watched him go, all long-limbed and still a little awkward, starting to fill into his frame, and something moved him to say, "Peter. Good night." 

Peter let out a yelp and fell off, right into Peter's side of the fence, but when Saal took a startled step forward, he heard a quick, "Oops. I'm okay! I'm okay." 

"Jesus, kid."

Peter muttered something that Saal couldn't quite catch, and darted for the back door of his house, ducking in quickly. Saal stared after him for a long moment, then he shook his head and sat back down on the porch. Arousal hummed uncomfortably in his blood, and Saal tried to distract himself by wondering where the ball had come into play. It wasn't really safe for a kid to be playing in the dark in the back yard, right? 

A kid. 

Christ.

Saal pinched at the bridge of his nose, disgusted all over again at himself, and finished his beer. Maybe he should break out the emergency vodka. Marinate his obviously malfunctioning moral system in hard liquor until it rebooted properly or drowned.

Couldn't God have at least given the kid spots or something, at the least? Peter was _flawless_. 

It took a couple of shots of vodka before Saal decided he was finally semi-functional enough as a normal human being to have another cold shower, then he rolled into bed, senses pleasantly dulled, dizzily contemplating the pile of case work he had. There wasn't much. Milano, Missouri, was a small town, and Milano PD consisted of six officers and a couple of reserves. It was a dead end town where a career in the police was concerned, but until now, Saal had liked the quiet. It had been a nice change after Iraq.

Staring up at the cracked ceiling, Saal folded his hands over his chest and sighed. Maybe it _was_ time to start working on getting transferred. Though. It wasn't really as though kids Peter's age had much of an interest in anything other than sports, games and girls, right? If Saal kept to himself and to police work, there was no real reason why their lives had to overlap. 

Hopefully.

Letting out an irritated sigh, Saal turned over onto his flank and rubbed at his eyes. He was hard, and it ached, but Saal liked to think that he still had enough self-respect not to jack off to a _kid_. Groaning, he rolled over again onto his back, and pulled a pillow onto his face. It was going to be a long night.

1.0.

"I suck," Peter told Gamora and Rocket glumly during lunch.

"What?" Rocket frowned. He was a scrappy little kid, with large narrow ears and a sharp nose that had given him the unfortunate and somewhat incomprehensible nickname of 'Raccoon' early in life: at least until Rocket had also turned out to be that one fucking mental little kid every schoolyard has who would bite and scratch and kick and not go down in a fight without at least trying to gouge out one other kid's eyes. 

Peter was still not entirely sure why they were friends, but the oddballs in the school tended to stick together, and so it was. "You remember the Baseball Plan?"

"Oh. That. I told you it was a stupid idea," Rocket snorted. "Did he arrest you for trespassing? Or did you throw too hard and break one of his windows? That would have been fucking hilarious."

" _No_. He was kinda nice about it. Even though I think he guessed that I was faking." Peter muttered. " _I_ fucked up. I just have no idea what to say around him." 

"Well," Gamora said comfortingly, "It's just a matter of practice. Like taekwondo." 

"How the hell is learning to talk to someone _anything_ like taekwondo?" 

Rocket shrugged. "I guess you beat someone over the head until things work out." 

"No," Gamora said dryly, "It means it's something that you get better with in _time_. You fucking idiots."

"Well, whatever it is, I blew it." Peter sighed. "He thinks I'm a kid." 

"You _are_ a kid," Rocket pointed out.

"You're not helping." 

"I mean, you're not even legal. Even if you got anywhere, you'll just get him into trouble," Rocket said reasonably. 

"I'll be legal in a year and a half!" Peter growled, then hastily lowered his voice when he got a few odd glances from around the nearest tables in the canteen. "'Sides. Getting to first and second base isn't illegal. Right?"

"Also, he's a cop," Rocket yawned. "Cops are all straight. It's a thing. Like death and taxes."

"That's most certainly not true." Peter muttered. 

"Look, Quill," Rocket patted Peter's hand comfortingly. "Your test scores are pretty good. Give it a year and a bit and then you can jet off to study in some nice, big uni in a nice, big state with a bit more pink in their water supply than-"

"I'm _not_ gay," Peter added irritably. "I'm equal-opportunity."

"Says the person who's been stalking some guy for ten years." 

"That's... _so_ not true. He only joined Milano PD five years back when he moved here." Rocket and Gamora exchanged a glance. "What?"

"This is going to be like the Riverboat thing," Gamora told Rocket sagely. 

" _That_ was totally an accident, which wasn't even fully my fault," Peter groaned. Set one shitty ass boat on fire, and no one ever lets you hear the end of it. 

"Quill," Rocket said, very seriously, "If you're so set on ruining that lemon-faced cop's life-"

"He is _not_ lemon-faced... wait... and I'm _not_ going to ruin his life and-"

"-then I guess since we're your friends and all, we'll help you do it," Rocket added blithely. 

"We could start by figuring out whether there's any competition," Gamora mused. "Muscle in on that."

"This is _not_ a gang takeover and I don't need your help," Peter protested, but Rocket ignored him. 

"Nah. Guy who spends Sunday night drinking beer alone on his back porch has got to be single. Or secretly a serial killer."

" _He's not a serial killer_ ," Peter yelped. 

"He kinda has the face for it." Rocket smirked, then he glanced up at the sound of a heavy footstep. 

Drax settled down a little ponderously at their bench, the seat creaking under his weight. The past year had been especially good to Drax, Peter noted sourly. The tiny little kid he had known had shot up and grown incredibly bulky, enough to be picked up for the football team, adored by coaches, girls, and other students alike. While Peter himself was neither quite here nor there: not really bulky, not really twink thin, and lanky as all hell. Sometimes, Peter was convinced that God hated him.

"Oh hey, Drax," Peter greeted him. 

"You seem troubled," Drax said, with a small frown.

"It's nothing," Peter muttered, even as Gamora said, "His Baseball Plan failed miserably."

"Ah." Drax seemed to think this over for a moment. "But it was a stupid plan."

" _Drax,_ " Peter protested, even as Rocket snickered and said, "Admit it, Quill. You need our help." 

"Oh yeah?" Peter scowled. "And what sort of help are you thinking of, huh?"

Drax shrugged. "I could just ring the officer's doorbell and tell him about you."

"No that is a very very very bad idea-"

"Or... talk to him at the station?" Gamora raised an eyebrow.

" _Even worse!_ " 

"Well," Rocket sniffed. "If you just want to suffer in silence, then feel free." 

"Seems better than the alternative," Peter sulked. "Just... forget it, okay? Forget it. I'll deal. I just thought, well, that afternoon, when we were playing with Drax's water guns, I kinda thought he was watching me." 

"Probably in case we broke one of his windows," Rocket noted, and Peter let out a long sigh.

"Yeah. You're probably right."

"It's not like you to give up," Gamora said gently. "Think of that house like a fort. You just need a reason to get past the defenses."

"...You scare me sometimes," Peter told her, fascinated. 

"I have," Drax announced, "An Idea."

" _You?_ No. _No_ , no, no."

II.

Long summer days meant that Peter and his friends were still laughing while playing some strangely complex game involving table tennis balls and cups and bottles by the time Saal crawled back from the precinct. He studiously didn't look at them this time, even when the big kid in Peter's group of friends suddenly marched right over to the fence, only to get hastily tackled by Peter.

Saal went inside his house to the sound of an argument starting, shaking his head slowly, and got a cold beer out of the 'fridge without even taking off his boots. A shower, Chinese take-out and another beer made him feel marginally more human, and the kids were gone by the time Saal sat down on the back porch to have a smoke. 

He nearly dropped his cigarette at a soft, "Hey," from the fence, and looked over sharply, in time to see Peter balance his elbows on the edge of the fence. It was a rickety old thing, a picket line of wooden boards that had been unpainted and untended ever since Saal had moved into the house, but right now, Saal envied the damn thing a little. 

"Yes?" Saal asked, a little curtly, and mentally kicked himself.

"Nice night, isn't it?" 

Saal nodded, very slowly. "Warm."

"I forgot to mention the other day," Peter said, "Um. Congrats. On that case. The November Man. Saw it on the news."

"State police got the bag," Saal shrugged, and added, "The arrest," when Peter looked a little confused. 

"But most of it was MPD work, right?" 

"Did our share," Saal conceded, wondering where this conversation was going. 

"You were pulling a lot of late nights," Peter noted. "Or, uh, so it looked like. Mom was wondering." 

Ah. Saal relaxed a little. Typical small town neighbourly nosiness. "There was a lot going on." 

"What's it like?" Peter seemed to blurt out. "Being a cop."

So that was where this was working to. "It's not a bad life. In a small town like this. Milano's a good place."

"Your partner's Rhomann, right?" 

"Yeah. Good man." 

"You guys get alot of cases?"

"Not particularly. Mostly just a few drunk and disorderlies. The November Man case isn't the norm." Saal took a sip of his beer, trying to figure out if Peter looked disappointed. "If you're interested in law enforcement, the sort you see on the tv, you're better off moving into a big city and joining a larger PD." 

Peter laughed, and it was a warm sound, all playful mischief, pulling arousal back into a slow burn in Saal's blood, God. "I don't think any sort of real life law enforcement is gonna be like tv."

"Depends on what kinda tv you're watching," Saal said, which led on to a discussion of True Detective - nothing Saal had ever seen - and Peter insisting on passing him the first ep through USB, darting briefly into his house and back. He was over Saal's fence before Saal could walk over, but although Peter was clearly curious, he didn't ask about Saal's house, and Saal wasn't entirely sure if inviting Peter in was going to be good for his sanity. Wishing Peter good night was difficult enough.

Unfortunately, thanks to Saal's extremely poor self-control, somehow Peter did manage to neatly worm himself into an invite only half a week and most of the (surprisingly good) True Detective later, and he looked around Saal's home, curious as a cat. Saal was awkwardly aware of how bare the house probably looked to a kid: all secondhand furniture and not very much of it at all in the first place, an empty kitchen and no paintings or frills to speak of, not even any magnets on the 'fridge. 

"You were in the army, right?" Peter asked, as Saal passed him a glass of lemonade. 

"Yeah." Saal didn't really feel like there was a need to elaborate.

"What were you doing in there? Tanks?"

"Military police." 

"Whoa. Why didn't you stay on?"

"Got disillusioned," Saal said, a little evasively. "Honourable discharge." 

"But not disillusioned enough to stay out of law enforcement?" Peter grinned. Fuck, the kid was _gorgeous_. Saal tried not to squirm.

"Veterans have a bit of trouble landing a job," Saal said candidly. "Rhomann helped me with this one." 

"Sounds like you're overqualified to be in a small town's PD."

"Sounds like you're trying to get rid of me," Saal replied, a little teasingly, and Peter blushed hotly.

Ah.

Wait.

"Kid," Saal began, a little uncertainly, but it seemed like the wrong thing to say - Peter scowled, stepped around the kitchen counter, and right into Saal's personal space. 

He froze up, even as Peter hissed, "I'm _not_ a kid!" and planted a kiss right on Saal's mouth. 

Stunned, Saal didn't move an inch, utterly shocked, and only managed to recover some brain power from his libido when Peter pressed closer and tried to lick into his mouth. Saal wasn't sure when his arm had curled around Peter's waist, but when he tried to say something, Peter wrapped his arms around Saal's neck and pushed his tongue into his mouth.

Fuck. Saal was going to hell for this. He kissed Peter back, shoving the boy against the edge of the kitchen bench and pushing a thigh between Peter's legs. Somehow, it wasn't surprising that Peter was hard, and the muffled, whining sound that Peter made as he rode experimentally up Saal's thigh just made his blood burn hotter.

Peter's hands were restless, curious at first as they darted over Saal's arms, pressing down over the cords of hard muscle under his shirt, then reverent as they skated up to his cheeks, and dully, Saal wondered exactly how _long_ Peter had been planning this after all, the way the kid made a soft, high sound of joy and disbelief when Saal waited only a moment for them to catch their breaths before kissing Peter again. He tasted like lemonade and the very best of summer, like a tall drink of cold water in a desert, and if this was what Saal would go to hell for, then it was going to be worth it. 

That maddening thought lasted another kiss before reality finally set in. "Kid," Saal gasped this time, when they pulled apart, and jerked his chin to the side when Peter moaned and leaned up, so goddamned eager.

" _Peter_ ," Peter corrected, narrowing his eyes.

"This isn't right," Saal said breathlessly. "You're... how _old_ are you?" 

"Age is only a number?"

"No it's not-" Peter cut off Saal's protest with a brushing kiss, then another, when Saal tried to keep talking, until they were both quiet, but for their shallow breaths, so close that their noses were nearly pressed together.

"I've got a confession to make," Peter murmured then. "Sorry."

Saal was fairly sure what it was going to be, judging by how the kid had gone all tense, his shoulders hunching defensively. "Hey. Take it easy, Peter."

"I don't think you even remember it at all," Peter continued softly. "Five years ago. I was always getting into fights. This house hadn't been lived in for a while, so I used to just hide out in the garden where I could be alone for a bit." 

Saal leaned back, studied Peter again, and _now_ he could place it, the familiarity of Peter's gait. The day he'd moved in, there had been a weird, skinny little kid in the garden, his face more bruise than skin. "You were that kid?"

Peter let out a hoarse laugh. "Yeah. Not surprised that you didn't place me. I probably looked pretty fucked up." 

"You _were_." Saal remembered giving Peter a glass of water and sitting down on the grass. Talking. He had been vaguely aware that Peter was a lonely kid.

"You were the first person other than my mom who ever tried to listen to me before," Peter said softly. "Everyone just thinks that I'm the problem kid. I've. Um. Since then. I-" 

"Peter-" 

"I'm fucking this up, aren't I?" Peter asked, his tone weary, rueful, and something in Saal twisted and broke a little. 

"Not really," Saal found himself whispering in response, and despite his best intentions, leaned over to taste Peter again.

2.0.

Disappointingly enough, Saal became carefully remote again whenever Peter visited, freezing up and dodging whenever Peter even tried to touch him. "What would your mom think?" Saal asked once, when Peter was examining the dinosaur of a box that Saal called the living room tv. Saal didn't even have _wifi_ , and his only computer was a cheap and rather horrible laptop. It was quite possibly the first really odd character flaw that the cop seemed to have.

Peter shrugged. "She works three jobs."

"She'll still know." 

"I'll tell her that I'm over because you have a playstation," Peter said, with exaggerated calm. "Relax."

"What's a playstation?" 

"Are you for _real_?" Peter yelped, then he scowled when Saal smirked faintly. 

He'd been somewhat surprised when a Playstation 4 was sitting next to a HDTV the next time he visited, wires in neat coils by the side. "It's secondhand," Saal said, a little defensively. "It's not right for you to lie to your mother," he added, when Peter just stared. 

"Pretty expensive thing to get just for the look of it," Peter observed, just to see Saal look away and his ears redden, and this time, with a bit of careful herding, he managed to pin Saal against the 'fridge, nuzzling Saal's neck while long-fingered hands pressed against his waist and then jerked back to flatten against the stainless steel 'fridge door. 

"Peter," Saal protested, his tone growing strangled as Peter nipped up his jaw. At the rate Peter was growing, he'll be taller than Saal in a year or so, give or take, and he found that he was looking forward to that. Maybe. 

"I know that you just think that I'm a skinny kid right now," Peter muttered, cheek pressed against the sharp line of Saal's collarbone, breathing in. Saal always smelled like metal and leather and machine oil, probably because the officer liked to tinker with an old bike in his garage when he wasn't working or drinking, and Peter liked it, liked to think about how he was pressing the scent of it into his own skin, when they were so close. 

"W-well-"

"But I'll be done growing up maybe in a couple of years or so, then I won't look this weird, I think, so, um, I really like you, and-" 

A warm hand pressed tentatively over the small of his back, and Peter tried not to arch into it, he really did, but nothing really seemed to be working the way he wanted, especially when Saal's hand rubbed up his spine and back down. "Peter," Saal said quietly, "It's not like that." 

"Like what?"

"You're," Saal hesitated, his ears growing even redder as hie eyes darted everywhere but Peter's face. "You're _gorgeous_. Even now. Just. You're just... look, I _know_ you're not legal. And I'm older than you, and-" 

"Garth," Peter said, a little breathlessly - _he thinks I'm gorgeous?_ \- "Do you know what's the average age that people lose their virginity right here in 'Merica? For guys? Seventeen."

"But that's not-" 

"You think I'm only in this for sex?" Peter wasn't sure whether to feel fascinated or irritated. "Look. I don't want you to get into trouble, OK? I'm just trying to say. I know what I'm getting into. You want to keep it all PG, that's fine. I just..." Peter offered a sheepish grin. "This is all going ass over backwards." 

"Is it?" 

"Pretty sure we were meant to date first before we start working out boundaries," Peter noted, and grinned, as mischievously as he could, but Saal's expression stayed solemn. 

"Peter. This is what I want. I want us to be friends until you're legal - no, listen to me - and then I want you to apply to MIT, like you were thinking, study aeronautics or whatever you like, and join NASA like you've always wanted."

Peter started to scowl. "How did you know about that?"

" _Mrs_ Rhomann Dey is your chem teacher," Saal pointed out. 

Oh yes. That was right. "I don't want to go interstate." Peter said softly, then added hastily, when Saal frowned, "Not, well, not just because of this. The thing is. I can't afford it. Even if I could get in. Which is insanely hard, by the way." 

"Aren't there scholarships?"

"Not full ones." Peter scowled. " _You're_ trying to get rid of me!"

"I should," Saal said uncomfortably, but this time, when Peter tried to kiss him, Saal didn't jerk away.

III.

Saal was somewhat surprised to come home one evening to find Meredith Quill waiting for him outside his door. She smiled at him, if stiffly, her hands curled tightly over her arms. “Can we talk?” Meredith asked brusquely, when Saal got close.

“Sure, ma’am.” Saal’s heart sank. “If you need to report something-“

“About Peter.” 

“Right.” His heart sank further. “You wanna… out here? Or come in?”

Meredith’s eyes narrowed slightly, then she said, in a slightly more conciliatory tone, “Off the street?” 

Saal unlocked the gate obligingly, walking them up to the front door, inviting Meredith in with a polite wave, then flicking on the lights and closing the door behind her. She shook her head when he offered her a drink, and shook her head again when Saal asked if she wanted to take a seat. Meredith scanned the sparse living room with narrowed eyes, the PS4 in its corner with the controllers, coiled up, Saal’s battered old laptop on the kitchen table, and the few dog-eared books that he had left lying about. 

One was clearly Peter’s - Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time, and Meredith stared at it for a long moment before she dragged her eyes away. Self-consciously, Saal leaned a hip against the kitchen counter and quietly craved a beer. He could see where this was going to go, and he wished tiredly that Meredith would just get it over and done with.

“Peter’s very fond of you.” Meredith began, with a terrible, flat sort of care. 

Saal nodded, then felt obliged to say something. “He’s a good kid.”

“I think he’s in love with you,” Meredith added, her tone edged now. 

“He’ll get over it.” Saal said, without really thinking, and when Meredith frowned at him, he added, “He seems like he’s a smart kid, and he’s gonna be off to uni soon, yeah? Rhomann told me his wife said she feels Peter’s got a fair shot at MIT.”

Pride warred briefly with a mother’s protective instincts, and Meredith relaxed just a fraction. “I kinda would like him to concentrate on that. Rather than. Well. Coming over for the PS4.” Meredith’s tone implied heavily that she rather doubted it was all that Peter came over for, and Saal didn’t try to lie. There was no point. 

It had been wrong of him after all, to do what he had done, and now that it had come to the light of day he felt only guilt and relief in equal measure. All this time stolen with Peter had felt like a strange sort of fever dream, one that he truly shouldn’t have been having, and waking up was awkward and unhappy and a little painful, but it was necessary. 

“Sure thing,” Saal said. 

“He’s… probably going to be stubborn about it. And.” Meredith nibbled on her lower lip. “I don’t think he’s going to listen to me.”

“Well he should,” Saal noted firmly. “You’re his mum.”

“Look,” Meredith said quickly, uncomfortably. “I’m not accusing you of anything, officer. I’m just. Well. Bit concerned. The way it looks and. He really needs to get into a good uni.”

“I understand, ma’am,” Saal said, and felt guilty all over again. “I was going to lend the PS4 to Rhomann anyway. His daughter’s been bugging him for one for a while.” 

“To play Minecraft, right?” Meredith laughed then, and it felt less like mirth but the release of a pressure valve, of stress whistling out, “Yeah, I know her mum. She’s got her parents wrapped around her little finger, that girl.” 

They talked about small town gossip for a while, until Meredith checked her phone and excused herself back home to ‘get started on dinner’, and as Saal walked Meredith to the gate he thought he caught movement over in the Quill house, at the second floor window. Distracted, Saal nearly missed Meredith’s nervous goodbye, and he murmured something halfhearted in turn.

“Maybe you should come over for dinner sometime,” Meredith offered, though she clearly didn’t mean it, her eyes darting between her house and his. She had come ready to fight, Saal sensed, a lioness hunched over its cub, and he swallowed his wry smile just in time. 

“Maybe. Thanks for the offer,” Saal said, carefully noncommittal, and watched as Meredith headed back home. Then he went back to his empty house, and got a beer out from the fridge. 

Three beers and a frozen dinner after, Saal was sitting on his back porch again, nursing a bottle muzzily and watching the clear, dark sky, when there was a scraping sound at the fence. Without looking over, Saal said quietly, “You’re gonna be trespassing, kid.” 

Peter ignored him, climbing defly over the fence and marching pointedly over to sit down next to him on the porch, arms folded, all but vibrating with rage, jaw set, all that golden skin flushed with anger. “Mum talked to you.”

“She did.” 

“Told you not to see me anymore?”

“Got it in one.” Saal raised his beer in a mock salute. “So you better head back. Or we’re both gonna get it.”

“Did she…” Peter took in a deep breath. “Did she threaten you or something?”

“You know your mum better than that,” Saal said carefully. “What she said made sense, that’s all. You don’t need distracting.”

“I’m doing fine in school,” Peter said sharply, “And in case you hadn’t heard me before, I’ve spent _years_ -“

“Peter,” Saal said slowly. “You. Don’t. Need. Distracting.”

“You’re scared of getting in trouble, is that it?” Peter snapped, but when Saal merely stared back at him evenly, he ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Okay. Okay. Look. Mum works three jobs. I just slipped up earlier today. She mentioned you in passing in the morning and I wasn’t really awake so I think I probably just had a stupid grin on my face.” 

“I gave her my word,” Saal said, not unkindly. “She’s your mother and you’re a minor. I wish you the best, Peter. But don’t do this again.”

“I love you,” Peter said fiercely, his eyes intent, brilliant and dark in the dim light from the ceiling of the porch, and Saal felt his chest clench up, in a slow and unravelling ache. 

“You’re too young to know what that means,” Saal said instead, and got up a little unsteadily from the step, and walked into his house. Peter didn’t follow him, and when Saal checked back after an hour or so, the kid was gone.

Well. That was that.

3.0.

Leukemia. It had been leukemia. Peter had watched his mother waste away before his eyes, and in what felt like no time at all he was in a badly fitting suit in the back of a church, standing beside his grandfather, red-eyed, stunned, too shell-shocked by life to speak. It was a small town and Meredith Quill had been much loved, but Peter would never quite remember the faces of those who had come, even his own friends, numb even when solemn-faced Gamora had clapped his shoulder, blinking slowly when Drax had hugged him, lifting him a foot off the ground.

It had been his friends who had more or less unceremoniously shoved him back to reality, and Peter had buckled down on his grief and loss and rage at the sheer unfairness of life and poured his heart into exams, and then into applications. The letter of offer from MIT came, and it was with bitterness that Peter accepted: his mother’s life insurance and the sale of their house had made it possible for him to go, even on a part scholarship and a loan. It was like blood money, made all the worse because the last few months between them had been strained and unhappy and raw.

He didn’t go home during the first year, or the second. But at the third, wiser, perhaps colder, Peter slunk back to the town of his birth, spent two days drunk out of his mind over at Rocket’s, then two more days sleeping it off at Drax’s. After that, and only after that, did he wash up, clean up, and go back. 

Back. 

Another family had moved in to the house that had been Peter’s and his mum’s, and he watched them from across the street for a while, wistful. It was a nuclear family, a modern all-American, two mums, one little girl and a big fluffy dog, a mutt of indeterminable age and species, and Peter was starting to head off when a battered old car pulled up outside Saal’s house, and the very person Peter had maybe-not-quite hoped to see got out, yawning and scratching wearily at his jaw, wearing a rumpled old suit that had probably seen better days, even if its owner wasn’t a police officer.

Saal froze up when he noticed Peter across the street, blinking, and for a moment Peter wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. He’d filled up these past two years, because MIT was, okay, nerd school in every sense of the word but that didn’t mean that everyone was a bespectacled computer potato, not that there was anything wrong with that, ‘course. Peter was taller now, broader, possibly getting bigger than Saal, and maybe that was weird, maybe - and no, that was definitely Saal surreptitiously checking him out. 

Something within Peter relaxed, and Peter went across the street before he could talk himself out of it, and tried a smile that turned out warm and genuine and maybe a little puppyish anyway, because it had been two years of abrupt endings and pain and might-have-beens, but Lord was Officer Garth Saal still a handsome man. 

“Hey,” Peter beamed, despite himself. “Man. It’s good to see you.” 

Saal nodded, a little jerkily, and… and maybe Peter had _assumed_ , after all. Maybe Saal hadn’t ever been quite as interested as Peter’s libido remembered. Maybe he had met someone else. 

“You’ve grown up. How’s school?” Saal asked, as though Peter was a little kid all over again, and despite himself, Peter felt a pulse of anger twist through him, and he clenched his teeth. 

“Uni is just _fine_ , thanks,” Peter said bitingly, and Saal flinched.

Just as Peter was starting to regret his tone, however, Saal asked, gruffly, “You wanna come in?” 

Peter tried not to look too relieved when he saw that Saal’s house looked more or less absolutely unchanged, save that the HDTV and the PS4 were gone. No extra furnishings, no extra shoes. Saal walked straight to the ‘fridge, and, despite Peter’s scowl, poured him a lemonade, then grabbed a beer for himself. 

Thankfully, Saal said nothing at all about Peter’s mum, or, thank the Gods, tried to make any further small talk, and they ended up sitting on the ratty old couch and drinking. It was hard not to stare, and Peter had thought about this, on and off, over the last two years, about how meeting Saal would go, about how they would have a fight, or how they might end up making up. Given that just remembering how _warm_ and solid Saal was pressed against Peter, kissing him, was usually sufficient reason to rub one out in a shower, Peter had, okay, maybe actually thought about this a lot. Not just. On and off. 

He hadn’t actually imagined a situation where they just sat in silence, though. Saal’s eyes were closed, as though Peter wasn’t even in the room, and that was hurtful all over again. Peter set his lemonade down pointedly on the coffee table, the glass making a loud _thunk_ as it hit the pitted old wood, but Saal didn’t even glance up, though he did open his eyes when Peter edged closer. 

“How long’s the school break?” Saal asked then, absently, as though reading through a mental script, and Peter had enough. He scrambled up, curling his fingers into Saal’s shirt and dragging him over for a kiss, ignoring Saal’s murmured protests and fingers pressed against his arm, the kiss furious and rough-edged and all teeth until Saal gentled it, with a low and liquid sound like a torn-up gasp, the beer bottle tinkling down somewhere on the ground as Peter scrambled onto Saal’s lap. 

“I still love you, you asshole,” Peter bit out, and Saal made that low and gasping sound again as he pulled Peter down for another kiss, slower now; they ended up stretched out on the couch with Peter on top, knees and legs everywhere, and it was brilliant like this, Saal’s solid weight under him, all muscle, kissing until Peter’s lips started to sting and his eyes started to water and then he pressed his face into the side of Saal’s neck instead, shaking. Saal rubbed his warm, big hands up and down Peter’s back, gentling him until Peter let out an angry and bitter huff and bit down, hard enough for Saal to yelp and swat at him and swear. 

After that it felt like all the awkwardness had gone, as though Peter was seventeen and stupid all over again, and he told Saal about his bitchy dorm roommate and his meatheaded mohawk-sporting boyfriend, about how Gamora was now in Harvard Law and apparently the terror of her class, about how Drax had been scouted as a top NFL draft prospect, about how Rocket was also in MIT but was quite possibly about to get a Pentagon offer, because all his friends were not quite human at the best of times. 

Then they kissed again and ordered in pizza and watched the latest season of True Detective on Saal’s crappy laptop until it gave up on life, and somewhere between Peter tinkering with its registry and Saal clearing up, they ended up stumbling up the narrow stairs, Peter’s mouth at Saal’s neck, shedding their clothes all over the steps and up on the landing, on the old gray carpet that had seen far better days, in front of a door that opened into a starkly clean bathroom with frayed white towels, and finally to a bedroom with a skylight, dimmed from the moon. 

The bed was a single, with a charcoal gray quilt, and the room had a walk-in wardrobe full of old shirts and older tees, an en-suite bathroom that was just as starkly clean, and a writing desk that was clearly unused. A pile of books was lined up on the desk and on the chair, and the side-table, but other than that the room could’ve passed as a cheap motel room: it was that empty. 

Peter’s dorm room, in contrast, was full of printed pics of Hubble Telescope photographs, of random memes and of stupid shit that he and Kraglin sometimes found and cut out of newspapers, and it often smelled of socks and beer, and was usually full of books and notes and receipts and crap, often up until Kraglin’s boyfriend had one of his occasional shitfits and threw out everything. Compared to that, Saal’s room looked militantly _un_ lived-in; Peter felt disoriented, looking around. 

“Nothing much,” Saal said, in what was probably the understatement of the century.

“How come you don’t have stuff?” Peter asked, and Saal arched an eyebrow at him.

“What stuff?”

“Not even a crappy little photo frame?”

“Ah.” Saal sat down on the edge of his bed, and pulled off his shoes.

“What d’you mean, ‘ah’?” Peter inquired suspiciously. “Is it all like, gathered up in critical mass in another room or something? Everyone has stuff.”

“Anything that matters, I can keep in here,” Saal tapped at his temple, and then he looked Peter up and down, slowly this time, almost tenderly, as though memorising him, storing it away, and Peter let out a shaky breath and toed off his shoes, wishing for a moment that he hadn’t chosen today to wear his orange striped socks. 

Thankfully, Saal didn’t seem to notice, especially when Peter pulled off his shirt, wide-eyed, his touch slow and reverent and worshipful when they ended up on the bed, Peter’s back on the quilt, Saal’s mouth against his jaw, his neck, wet and sloppy as he worked down to his chest. When he pressed his tongue against a nipple, Peter squeaked, hands clenching up over Saal’s shoulders, the gorgeous tight line of ropy muscle, then he moaned, when Saal muffled a rough chuckle and sucked.

Blissed out, Peter only vaguely registered Saal tugging off the rest of their clothes, panting open-mouthed as a tongue curled over his navel. He giggled, despite himself, and blushed, and swatted and tried to scowl when Saal smirked against his belly and did it again. God. Everything felt so _good_.

“Right so far?” Saal murmured, curled between Peter’s thighs, and for a moment Peter wished there was more light, that he could see what desire had done to the usually reserved, tightly controlled Garth Saal. He could feel the tension in Saal, from the fingers clenched over Peter’s hip, to the faint tremor in that whisky-rough voice, but Peter wished he could _see_. 

“Y-yeah,” Peter said, and wished he hadn’t stuttered. Defiantly, he added, “Would be better if you got a move on.”

“What d’you want to do, then?” Saal inquired, sounding amused. “Got this far before?”

“Got this far an’ some,” Peter shot back, annoyed. As far as he was concerned, Saal had more or less dumped Peter anyway, years back, and rather unceremoniously: what Peter had done in the interim was his own fucking business. 

“Just checking,” Saal said quietly, and disappointingly, he didn’t even sound jealous. Peter squirmed, trying to sit up, to twist closer to check, but then his head dropped back down on the pillow with a groan as Saal’s mouth sealed tight over Peter’s cock, unhurried and slow and disorientingly hot.

Peter _had_ done this before. With girls, with boys, he’d lost his virginity in the first year of uni and hadn’t looked back. But most of it had been fumbled, all in a rush of getting off, as quickly as possible, some of it drunken, some of it just plain awkward. 

There was none of that here, not with the slow and worshipful way Saal fit Peter into his mouth, as though he was being given a gift but once in his lifetime, the fingers of one hand curled around the rest of Peter’s cock, his free arm pressed in an unyielding weight over Peter’s belly. Saal drank him down, flesh, cries, his writhing abortive bucks, then let him up again, beautifully unhurried, ignoring the staccato gouges that Peter’s heels drummed on the sheets. It was the slowest and most thorough blowjob that Peter had ever had and it was magnificent; had he been older, had his blood burned less hotly, had it not been _Garth Saal_ doing this to him, maybe Peter would have lasted long enough for that final pulse of ecstasy to have come less embarrassingly quickly.

He stammered an incoherent apology as Saal choked and gasped something and then seemed to _swallow_ , licking up clean, and dazed, Peter stared as Saal inched back up, the moon catching the sharp edge of his wolfish smile. “My go,” Peter managed to gasp, because he was competitive that way, but Saal shook his head and wiped at his mouth absently with the back of his hand; it was Peter who had to swarm up to kiss him, ignoring the shocked sound of protest that Saal wormed between them, to grasp him with hands too hot, too rough. 

It was enough anyway, somehow: Saal tensed up and choked out a garbled cry, gashed against Peter’s cheek in a wet burst of breath, and then he was coming, all hot and twitchy spurts over Peter’s fingers and wrists. It was fantastic and it was not enough and perhaps Saal saw this in the cast of Peter’s face, something of the hunger that he had only briefly cooled. Peter found himself shoved down onto the sheets, kissed until he had licked away every last dram of come from Saal’s mouth, chased the very last taste of it from the rim of his teeth, until his blood was running hot again and he squirmed against Saal’s hips. 

This time Saal used his fingers, slicked up with something he had unearthed in a rush from the side drawer, slippery and wet and obscene as he buried digits up Peter’s ass, knuckles stretching and tight against the rim of Peter’s hole. Peter was partly sprawled over Saal, on top of him, cock leaking and trapped against the hard swell of Saal’s belly, mouth pressing whimpers and pleas against Saal’s neck. The air smelled thickly of sweat and sex and the beer on Saal’s breath and Peter swallowed it all, dragged it all in, then Saal twisted his fingers against _something_ and a scream was wrenched out of Peter, pleasure twisting him an inch up against Saal’s belly and then back down, as he blindly tried to take more into himself _harder_ -

“Fuck,” Saal whispered, “God, you’re beautiful.” 

Saal’s voice sounded strained, like that confession had been wrung out of him, pulled raw into the air like a secret that had never meant to worm free, and Peter ducked his mouth harder against Saal’s neck, grazed his teeth against the skin and rocked his swollen flesh against Saal’s, squeezing a hand between them both, fingers slippery from eagerness. It took a few tries before he managed to make a tight, slicked fist for them both to thrust into, and then Saal was dragging up his chin, kissing him, just as awkward and slippery and earnest. 

When he came again, this time, Peter dug his fingers tightly into Saal’s shoulders, as though he was never going to let go: blindly, vicariously, he wanted to score this memory into Saal’s skin. He wanted to mark the meaning of it into Saal’s bones, the violent, vibrant shout of it. Beneath him, Saal grunted, almost sounding startled, as though he had heard it, his hips stuttering against Peter’s for only a moment longer before he bit down hard on Peter’s shoulder, a bright note of pain that startled Peter into crying out.

“Sorry,” Saal said, as he cleaned them up after: he’d raised a weal from the mark of his teeth against Peter’s skin, though it hadn’t been hard enough to bleed him.

“It was awesome,” Peter said sleepily, and made grabby hands at Saal until he stopped wiping them down and messing with towels and crawled into bed. Saal made a murmured, almost indignant noise as Peter snuggled close and held on fast, but he relaxed, slowly, an awkward fit, and then Peter was out for the count. 

They had coffee far too damned early in the morning, and toast and slightly charred eggs and bacon, because Saal was Going To Work despite all the sad-eyed stares that Peter tried, wearing one of Saal’s old shirts and perched at the kitchen counter. 

“I’m going to spend the whole day slowly jerking off on your bed,” Peter told Saal, just to watch Saal twitch in equal parts horror and outrage and lust, but in the end he relented and spent the day with Rocket and Drax at the tiny little local mall instead, ghosting through Walmart and having sundaes in the diner. 

He rescued his laptop from Rocket’s place and brought pizza back to Saal’s and spent the rest of the day cursing Saal’s positively prehistoric connection speeds. “Seriously,” he told Saal later, as they polished off microwaved pizza. “It’s like you’re living in the Jurassic period. You’re maybe a step away from dialup. _Maybe_.” 

“Probably because you can’t get dialup these parts any longer,” Saal shot back, poker faced, and cracked a tiny smirk as Peter swatted at him. They ended up wrestling on the couch and it was comfortable again, deceptively so, even with grief and history between them and MIT, and all of Peter’s dreams that had never been rooted in this town.

Maybe all that turned out to be written clearly on him too: Saal ended up just watching him, on his back on the couch with Peter sprawled on top, and finally, Saal said softly, “It’s all right.”

“What is?” Peter demanded fiercely. All of the night before seemed all of a sudden like some sort of hallucination. Reality had come to the fore, like a cold slap. 

“What you need to do. Where you have to go.” Big hands rubbed down Peter’s back, warm and solid, as though bracing him. “When you get there, if you still need me, call me. We can work something out.” 

“‘If I still need you’?” Peter repeated, blinking, then he saw the truth of it, in Saal’s wry and uneven smile. This was Saal letting him go, because he’d never actually thought that Peter would come back to Milano in the first place. Peter wasn’t the only one who had thought the night before a fever dream. 

Saal frowned as Peter clenched his hands in his shirt, bunching it up. “Here’s what I’m going to do,” Peter hissed, all of a sudden furious and yet joyous all at once, his heart hammering so fast that he felt lightheaded from it. “I’m gonna graduate. Then I’m going to get into SpaceX - fuck NASA. And then. I’m gonna come and get you. _That’s_ how we’ll ‘work something out’. You _asshole_.”

Peter stopped, flushed and still breathless; he was panting when Saal leaned up for a tentative kiss, still angry enough about it all that he bit rather than licked into it, dully shocked to feel a tremor shake through Saal’s shoulders, under Peter’s knuckles, and then he heard it. Saal was laughing, low and rough, and it was the first time Peter had ever heard Saal laugh like this, all honest and unabashed. Peter felt like he should get mad, say _something_ , but Saal tucked him between his solid bulk and the ratty back of the couch instead, held him until they were both quiet. Only then did Saal let out his breath in a rush, as though he’d bottled it all in, every anxious thought, every doubt. It was faith that Saal drew back in, Peter felt: the restless touch of Saal’s hands over the curve of his spine had gone still. 

“When you get where you need to be,” Saal corrected himself, whispering it close now, slow, lips pressed against Peter’s cheek. “Call me.”

**Author's Note:**

> aha. exorcised that ficbunny good.
> 
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent


End file.
